Anecdotes and Advice for High Growth

Groupon’s Stumble – Barrier to Scalability

I wasn’t surprised to see Groupons latest announcement, they have always had a potential fatal flaw for long termScalability – Barriers To Entry. Their business model is easy to replicate, maybe not by one particular competitor but an aggregate of thousands. And that’s what’s happening – mass replication. It’s coupons, discounts.

They should’ve taken that $5 billion form Google when it was offered – probably won’t see that valuation again without a major pivot.

They can fix this problem; they could reshape themselves into an defensible winner before it’s too late and they go down the Yahoo path (start out with a spike then descend forever). @tomnora